Talk:Navvy/Archives/2012

The Irish Navvy and his Stew

When investigating the origins of usage of the term "navigator" to refer to an unskilled labourer, in highly stratified English society, I came across the Irish labourers who performed the function and the French name for mutton and potato stew - viz "Navarin" from the Navarrese shepherds whose stock fare it was - as it was in Ireland. Might it be that an upper-crust wag coined the term Navvy to refer to these people through their food, but offered the polite - actually quite flattering - descriptor of "navigator" as a cover? I hasten to add that I am not querying the bona fides of the more usually cited origin of the term - only its quirky socially presuming character which is only excusable via the term "navigation" for one of these projects. 210.50.143.21 (talk) 08:45, 9 June 2009 (UTC) Ian Ison